Dialogue on Democracy

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Five distinguished Canadians and one Australian delivered the annual
Lafontaine-Baldwin Lectures between 2000 and 2005. All six speeches
appear here, along with the triennial conversations among the three
previous speakers.

In 2000, the speaker was John Ralston Saul, the well-known and
-respected essayist. Saul discussed the significance of Louis-Hippolyte
LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin, co-leaders of the Province of Canada,
from 1848 to 1851, who showed that French and English Canadians could
work together. Their legacy is a public school system, as well as a
peaceful—more or less egalitarian—society.

In 2001, Alain Dubuc, now a columnist for Montreal’s La Presse and
Quebec City’s Le Soleil, discussed the clash of Canadian and Quebec
nationalisms. Dubuc deplored both Jacques Parizeau’s remark on the
night of the 1995 referendum about “money and the ethnic vote” and
the Anglo idea that if Canada is divisible, Quebec also is divisible.
That, he warned, could lead to serious problems. Dubuc saw similarities
between the two nationalisms in that partisans of both see their
societies as threatened.

In 2002, George Erasmus, former chair of the Assembly of First Nations,
regretted that his people appeared as losers in need of charity, with
gas-sniffing young people in Davis Inlet. “The picture of needs blocks
out a perception of Aboriginal capacity,” said Erasmus, and he foresaw
better days.

In 2003, Beverley McLachlin, the chief justice of Canada, expressed
agreement with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson that the greatest threat to
peace is mistreatment of minorities. Canada, she said, has not always
treated its minorities well, and she provided the case of a Blackfoot
classmate named George. George, a good student, wanted to be a lawyer.
The University of Alberta required applicants to have capacity in two
languages, and George spoke English and Blackfoot fluently. Alas, the
latter did not count, and George’s career was thwarted.

In 2004, David Malouf, the Australian novelist whose 1993 Remembering
Babylon was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, compared Canada and
Australia.

In 2005, Louise Arbour, now the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
lamented the dire poverty that still exists in Canada. On the OECD list
of countries in this regard, she said Canada ranked 12 of 17.

Dialogue on Democracy is highly recommended for all academic and public
libraries.